TX Text Control .NET Server

Debian

Topic

Debian has no .NET packages in its own archive, so on Debian 12 and 13 the ASP.NET Core Runtime comes from Microsoft's package repository. Apart from this step and a few details of a fresh installation, a Debian server runs an application with TX Text Control .NET Server exactly like an Ubuntu server: published for linux-x64, started by systemd and reached through nginx.

The Debian-specific steps follow below. For publishing the application, the service file and the nginx configuration, they point to the matching sections of Ubuntu, which apply to Debian unchanged.

Prerequisites

  • A server with Debian 12 or Debian 13. Microsoft supports .NET 10, 9 and 8 on both versions. An ASP.NET Core application with the TX Text Control 34.0 packages runs on both; Debian 11 doesn't meet the Linux Requirements.
  • A user account with sudo privileges. See Set Up sudo if your account doesn't have them yet.
  • An ASP.NET Core application that uses the Core engine, for example from Document Editor: ASP.NET Core. The commands use a .NET 10 project named MyApp.
  • A runtime license for the server. See Runtime Licenses.

What Differs From Ubuntu

DebianUbuntu
.NET packagesMicrosoft package repository, which you register firstUbuntu's own package feeds
dotnet command/usr/share/dotnet/dotnet, linked from /usr/bin/dotnet/usr/bin/dotnet

On Debian, sudo may also be missing, as described below. Everything else is the same: the user www-data, the folder /var/www, the systemd unit with ExecStart=/usr/bin/dotnet, the nginx layout with /etc/nginx/sites-available/default and the Uncomplicated Firewall.

Set Up sudo

If you set a root password during the installation of Debian, sudo isn't installed, and the user created during installation isn't in the sudo group. Set it up as root:

su --login
apt install sudo
adduser <user> sudo

Replace <user> with your user name, then log out and log in again for the group membership to take effect.

Install the ASP.NET Core Runtime

Register the Microsoft package repository. On Debian 13:

wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/debian/13/packages-microsoft-prod.deb -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb
rm packages-microsoft-prod.deb

On Debian 12, use debian/12 in the address instead of debian/13. If wget isn't installed, install it first with sudo apt-get install -y wget.

Then install the ASP.NET Core Runtime, which contains the .NET Runtime and the ASP.NET Core Runtime:

sudo apt-get update && \
  sudo apt-get install -y aspnetcore-runtime-10.0

Check the installation with dotnet --list-runtimes. The Document Editor backend is built for .NET 8 and rolls forward to the newest installed major version, so it runs on the .NET 10 runtime as well.

sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade install new patch releases of .NET later. After an upgrade of Debian itself, register the repository again with the address of the new version.

Deploy the Application

  1. Prepare the application. Bind the backend to the loopback address and add the Forwarded Headers Middleware, as described in Prepare the Application.

  2. Publish it for Linux on the development machine with dotnet publish -c Release -r linux-x64 --self-contained false. Publish the Application lists what the output contains.

  3. Copy it to /var/www/myapp and give the files to www-data, as in Copy the Application to the Server. Debian has the www-data user.

  4. Create the systemd service from Run the Application as a systemd Service. The service file works unchanged, because the Microsoft packages provide /usr/bin/dotnet, and the application finds the command there to start the Document Editor backend.

  5. Install nginx:

    sudo apt-get install -y nginx

    Debian's nginx package uses the same /etc/nginx/sites-available layout as Ubuntu's. Replace /etc/nginx/sites-available/default with the configuration from Configure nginx, test it with sudo nginx -t and load it with sudo nginx -s reload.

  6. Install and configure the firewall:

    sudo apt-get install -y ufw

    Then allow SSH, HTTP and HTTPS and enable the firewall, as in Configure the Firewall.

  7. Verify the deployment in the browser and in the journal of the service, as described in Verify the Deployment.

When the Runtime Isn't Found

If apt-get reports "Unable to locate package" or "Some packages could not be installed" for aspnetcore-runtime-10.0, the repository registration didn't work. Remove and register it again:

sudo dpkg --purge packages-microsoft-prod && sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo apt-get update

The command needs the packages-microsoft-prod.deb file, so download it again first. The Microsoft package repository publishes .NET 10 for x64 and Arm64; TX Text Control needs x64. Install .NET on Debian describes a manual registration for the case that this doesn't help.

Next Steps